Infographic: Choosing Between Printing Methods

This infographic was submitted to us by Company Folders, who provided this description:

There are multiple printing methods for graphic designers to select from when sending designs to a commercial printer, including 4 Color Process Printing, Spot Color Printing, Foil Stamping, Embossing and Debossing. Each method is capable of producing high quality printed marketing collateral for branding your corporate image, but it is important to know which method fits your specific printing needs. This infographic will give you the information you need to know to choose which printing method is right for you.

If your print technique is incompatible with any of these elements, it can make your finished product less attractive or even downright illegible. For that reason, it is vital to select the right method for your particular project.

This informative tool gives a good rundown of how you might select the right printing process for your project’s requirements. The examples at the end provide good guidance for someone who might not be familiar with how the different processes present in a finished product. It’s a good overview of the basics of printing without getting overbearing.

Since the subject matter is presented in more of a “how-to” format, there isn’t any opportunity for data, which closes the graphic off from the potential for data visualization. Since that’s the primary tool used in infographics, it’s difficult to evaluate this as an infographic. As aforementioned, it’s a good tool that accomplishes what it’s after, but only by a series of checks and Xs. Actually, there is one symbol that could use a key: the exclamation point in a yellow circle, used twice in “Selecting the Type of Paper,” isn’t really explained. My guess would be “use with caution” or “may not produce ideal results” — something to that effect — but a brief explanation, like is given for the strikethrough “Does not apply” in the previous section, would help clarify.

The introductory paragraph could also use a second look — the word “method(s)” is used four times in three sentences, and the last sentence also features odd repetition: “The information below will give you the information you need…”

As a tool I’d give this an A-, but I can’t properly grade it as an infographic because it doesn’t contain visualizable data.